


bury a friend

by actualromeo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ghosts maybe, Murder, idk - Freeform, time/death fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualromeo/pseuds/actualromeo
Summary: "do you believe in ghosts?" he asked her. he made it sound like a statement, not a question.





	bury a friend

"do you believe in ghosts?" he asked her. he made it sound like a statement, not a question. she stayed quiet, hoping he'd continue on his own, and after a few moments, he said, "i saw it. the tombstone."

he's talking about hers. she shuts her eyes, but it doesn't block out the world. "you followed me."

"i thought..." he trails off. she can see his expression behind her eyelids. quick thinking, a carefully manufactured furrow of guilt between his brow, trying to explain this off the way he always does. it's the way justin is- he gets away with anything. "i don't know. i'm sorry."

when she opens her eyes, he looks guilty, as she'd thought. but he looks sincere. genuine. justin's touch on her arm, stopping her in in the middle of her stride, is feather light and yet tight enough to hurt. as if he's afraid to touch her and yet afraid she may drift away in the wind. "i'm not a ghost."

"that's your tombstone," he stresses, frowning. "i thought it- i don't know, i thought it was your moms or something at first, but.. ellery rodman, december seventh, 2002 to december seventh, 2018. that's your birthday." his eyes don't quite water, but they crease, his mouth trembling. "you died on your birthday?"

"i'm not a ghost," she repeats, harsher this time. she feels like she might be, honestly. she feels so light that just talking above a whisper makes her dizzy, like she may waste her energy away and simply disappear. "i'm just dead."

justin looks at her, and for the first time, she realizes. he's shaken to the core. this isn't star quarterback, get away free card smile, get any girl he wants with a word justin graves. it's just justice 'justin' alyssa graves. he isn't faking. he's scared. of her, maybe. "dead?" he asks, faintly. the arm clenched in his pocket draws out, hovering towards her slowly. to check if she's real.

there's a long, contemplative moment, where she allows him to touch her. finally, she decides. "gavin. gavin suters and the accident that killed four people. malie, alek, ben, and jali. you remember that?"

she can see the cogs working in his head. "you didn't die, thou..gh..." he says, trailing off. "december seventh. that was-- that was? but you didn't die?"

she blows out a breath. "have you ever noticed that malie doesn't have a grave? that ben and alek and jali and i do, but she doesn't? if you comb songbird memorial park, you won't find it. i've looked for it three times over." people cried for ben, alek, and jali more than they ever would for malie, the immigrant with an accent so thick the teachers couldn't understand her half the time. ellery couldn't find it in her to cry for the boys. she lost her friend, gavin lost his. justice.

justin just looks upset, a little confused. "she's not supposed to be dead. i am, but, but i can- i'm supposed to--" her breath catches in her throat. gavin suters flashes behind her eyes. him, in the back pathway behind the school, dragging her there with a frantic, mad look. she had been terrified of him. she had thought that he had come back even after he had killed her, just to torture her. instead he had cried.

(he had explained about martin corse and about alek james. the shooting martin pulled at robin high across town- months and months ago, but memorials still hanging in hallways. how alek and him had died, shot through the plastic wall separating his classroom and the english classroom next door, and he had just woken up alive. his parents transferred him from robin to jefferson, ignoring his grave sitting in songbird where alek had none, ignoring all of the things that didn't quite add up.)

"i have to kill him. i have to-- i'm supposed to kill gavin."

justin physically jerks back from her. "ellery, don't," he says, voice wary.

("gavin, what?" she had asked, terrified.

"you have to," he said, shaking head to toe. "that's how i got alek back. i killed martin. i- i was the one that bombed the juvenile center, that was me. that's how i got alek back."

"alek is gone!" she'd shouted.

"and maybe i can get him back again!" he screamed back. "he should be here, not me!")

"i'm not going to." she pauses. "i don't know if i'm going to." she misses malie more than anything else in the universe.

\--

nobody suspects it was her when gavin's mother finds his body hanging from the ceiling fan. he'd been spiraling for months, and diagnosed with depression years before that. gavin hadn't even fought.

malie is the one that calls her to report the news.

gavin's body is buried right next to alek's.


End file.
